9-JAN-2011, 12-3pm <note earlier start time>

Presentation 1-3pm: Revelations from Early Naturalist Records

Speaker: Ed McGowan, Ph.D., Director of Science and Trailside Museums and Zoo

Potluck Brunch 12pm-1pm Bring your favorite culinary creation to share for brunch, as well as your plate and serving/eating utensils.

The naturalist tradition of the 19^th century is perhaps best known for the life works and travels of adventurers such as Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace in far flung places. Here in the Highlands, our own homegrown 19^th century naturalists also pursued, recorded, and collected the variety of life in our wilder places. Two of these naturalists, Edgar Mearns and Wirt Robinson, both stationed at West Point, kept detailed records of their observations, providing a century-old baseline to examine environmental change. Using these records, as well as prior and subsequent data, Ed will trace our evolving biodiversity from then until today.

6-FEB-2011, 1-3pm

Birds, Our Endangered Allies: The Importance of Birds in Native American Spirituality
Speaker: Evan Pritchard, Founder-Director, Center for Algonquin Culture

In this presentation, Mi'kmaq/Celtic author Evan Pritchard will share some Native American perspectives concerning the spiritual role of birds, as teachers, messengers, guardians, and musicians. He will share a number of remarkable stories told by Native Americans he interviewed for his book Bird Medicine. These stories reveal not only beliefs about birds held by many indigenous people today, but also give us insight into bird behavior in general. Pritchard will also discuss new hazards birds face, dangers which impact the four million year old relationship between humans and birds.

Evan Pritchard is the author of No Word For Time, Native American Stories of the Sacred, Native New Yorkers, and its sequel, Henry Hudson and the Algonquins of New York, which is required reading for many local High Schools (source: Barnes and Nobles). As founder and director of the Center for Algonquin Culture in Woodstock/Pine Hill, he has worked with countless elders to help preserve the ancient history of North America. He first learned about Native American bird lore from his Great Aunt Helen Perley, a renowned Mi’kmaq activist in Maine who gave raptor shows in schools from the 1920s on, and continued raising and communicating with birds into the 1990s. Helen is the subject of a biography “Mrs. Perley’s People” (her birds are her people!) by award winning author Ellen Noyse Johnson, and “Aunt Helen’s Little Herb Book” by grand nephew Evan Pritchard.  Evan has taught Native American studies courses at Marist, Vassar, and at Pace University, and lectures widely across the Eastern US and Canada. Evan’s website is at www.algonquinculture.org.   

13-FEB-2011, 1-3pm SNOW DATE

Birds, Our Endangered Allies: The Importance of Birds in Native American Spirituality
Speaker: Evan Pritchard, Founder-Director, Center for Algonquin Culture

27-FEB-2011, 1-3pm

2010: A Year without Mushrooms

Speaker: Ray Clyne, PIPLON Member

Even with the drought-like conditions last year many forms of fungi were found, if you looked closely enough and did not ignore the often overlooked "underdogs" of the fungi world. And despite the dry year quite a few "new" fungi were found in our continued documentation of fungi in PIPC lands, with a few surprises! Ray will also briefly discuss the part fungi have played in various cultures and how they have actually helped shape history, both in theory and fact, plus discuss their role in the forest ecosystem and how to spot "fungi imposters."

6-MAR-2011, 1-3pm

TBA

13-MAR-2011, 1-3pm

American Indian Rock Art in the Lower Hudson River Valley and Coastal New York

Speaker: Edward J. Lenik, R.P.A., Sheffield Archaeological Consultants

Located along rivers, at the edges of lakes, on mountain boulders, in rock shelters, on rock ledges where the continent meets the ocean, and tucked into parks and public places, American Indian rock art offers tantalizing glimpses of the signs and symbols of Native American culture. Petroglyphs carved into rock surfaces and pictographs painted on them are harder to find in northeastern North America than in the American Southwest, but they are here. The lower Hudson River Valley contains examples of these elusive artifacts from the past.

Archaeologist Edward J. Lenik has had a lifelong fascination with the petroglyphs and the pictographs of northeastern North America. He has researched and searched out the rock art that remains here and is the author of two books on American Indian rock art of the northeast. Ed will share his adventures, discoveries and interpretations on rock art sites in the Hudson and coastal New York regions.

This small turtle effigy on a pendant found near Kingston, NY is an example of Lower Hudson River Valley rock art.

20-MAR-2011, 1-3pm

TBA

3-APR-2011, 1-3pm

TBA